Contents

Early life

Neeson was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the son of Katherine "Kitty" Neeson (née Brown), a cook, and Bernard "Barney" Neeson, a caretaker at the Ballymena Boys All Saints Primary School.[4] He was raised Roman Catholic[5][6][7] and was named Liam after the local priest.[8] The third of four siblings, he has three sisters: Elizabeth, Bernadette, and Rosaline.[9] At age nine, Neeson began boxing lessons at the All Saints Youth Club and later became Ulster's amateur senior boxing champion.[10] Neeson first stepped on stage at age 11 after his English teacher offered him the lead role in a school play, which he accepted because the girl he was attracted to was starring in it.[11] From then on, he kept acting in school productions for the following years.[12]

His interest in acting and decision to become an actor was also influenced by minister Ian Paisley, whose Presbyterian church Neeson would sneak into. Neeson has said of Paisley: "He had a magnificent presence and it was incredible to watch him just Bible-thumping away... it was acting, but it was also great acting and stirring too."[13] In 1971, Neeson was enrolled as a physics and computer science student at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, before leaving to work for the Guinness Brewery.[14] Also at Queen's, he discovered a talent for football and was spotted by Seán Thomas at Bohemian F.C. There was a club trial in Dublin and Neeson played one game as a substitute against Shamrock Rovers, but he was not offered a contract.[15]

Career

1976–1993

After leaving the university, Neeson returned to Ballymena where he worked in a variety of casual jobs, from a fork-lift operator at Guinness to a truck driver. He also attended teacher training college for two years in Newcastle upon Tyne, before again returning to his hometown. In 1976, Neeson joined the Lyric Players' Theatre in Belfast where he performed for two years. He got his first film experience in 1977, playing Jesus Christ and Evangelist in the religious film Pilgrim's Progress. Neeson moved to Dublin in 1978 after he was offered a part in Ron Hutchinson's Says I, Says He, a drama about The Troubles, at the Project Arts Centre. He acted in several other Project productions and joined the Abbey Theatre (the National Theatre of Ireland).

Star Wars

In 1999, Neeson starred as Jedi MasterQui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Director George Lucas cast Neeson in the role because he considered the actor to have great skills and presence, describing him as a "master actor, who the other actors will look up to, who has got the qualities of strength that the character demands."[21] As the first Star Wars film to be released in sixteen years, it was surrounded by a large amount of media anticipation. Neeson's connection to Star Wars started in the Crown Bar, Belfast. Neeson stated to Ricki Lake, "I probably wouldn't have taken the role if it wasn't for the advice of Peter King in the Crown during a Lyric reunion."[clarification needed] Despite mixed reviews from critics and fans,[22]The Phantom Menace was an enormous box-office success and remains the most financially successful Star Wars film unadjusted for inflation.[23] Neeson's performance as Qui-Gon received several positive reviews,[24][25] and a Saturn Award nomination.[26] Qui-Gon's disembodied voice, provided by his uncredited role, would later be heard during a brief scene in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Qui-Gon was supposed to make an appearance in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) as a Force Ghost, and Neeson had hinted at involvement.[27] However, he was ultimately unable to appear due to a motorcycle injury, and his character is only mentioned in the film.[28] In the animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–2014), Neeson reprised the role of Qui-Gon once again by voicing the character in two episodes of the third season and one episode of the sixth season.

He also voiced the main character's father, James in the video game, Fallout 3.[35] Executive producer Todd Howard said, "This role was written with Liam in mind, and provides the dramatic tone for the entire game".[36]Fallout 3, the third game in the Fallout series, was extremely well received by critics and shipped 4.7 million copies by the end of 2008, the year it was released.[37] In the director's commentary of the 2007 Transformers DVD, Michael Bay said that he had told the animators to seek inspiration from Neeson in creating Optimus Prime's body language. Neeson appeared as Alistair Little in the BBC Northern Ireland/Big Fish Films television drama Five Minutes of Heaven, which tells the true story of a young Protestant man convicted of murdering a Catholic boy during The Troubles.[38]

He starred in the action film Taken in 2008, a French produced film also starring Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace. Based on a script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Pierre Morel, the film stars Neeson as a retired CIA operative from their elite Special Activities Division who sets about tracking down his teenage daughter after she is kidnapped. Taken was a worldwide box office hit, grossing $223.9 million worldwide, making almost $200 million more than its production budget. Neeson has stated in interviews that he believed that Taken had put some people off the idea of actually travelling to Europe.[39]

In 2010, Neeson voiced the character Aslan again in the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Later, he stated, "Aslan symbolises a Christlike figure, but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries"; this disappointed many fans of the series, who felt that he was "destroying the author's legacy to be politically correct".[46][47] In 2011, Neeson starred in Unknown, a German-British-American co-production of a French book, it was filmed in Berlin in early 2010. It has been compared to Taken, which was set in Paris. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film enjoyed box office success in the United States. It was largely funded by Dark Castle entertainment with smaller amounts coming from the Berlin film agency.

On 31 January 2014, it was reported that Neeson would work with director Martin Scorsese again in an adaptation of the novel Silence.[53] Neeson had a supporting role as the henchman Bad Cop/Good Cop in the animated film The Lego Movie, which was a critical and commercial success, and went on to become the second highest-grossing film of 2014. He later played Bill Marks in the action film Non-Stop.[54] The film was released on 28 February 2014.[54] He also appeared, uncredited, as God in the BBC2 series Rev.. Neeson stars in the 2014 film A Walk Among the Tombstones, an adaption of the best-selling novel of the same name, in which he plays former cop Matthew Scudder, a detective hired to hunt the killers of a drug dealer's wife. The film opened to positive reviews, with Neeson receiving critical acclaim for his performance.

During Super Bowl XLIX, Supercell did a Clash of Clans commercial with him playing the game and vowing revenge on his opponent BigBuffetBoy85 while waiting for his scone at a bakery.[55]

Political views

Neeson is a critic of the proliferation of firearms in the US and has made calls for gun control.[56] In January 2015, he repeated his views, calling US gun laws a "disgrace" in an interview with Dubai newspaper Gulf News when replying to a question about the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris earlier that month.[57] In response, US gun manufacturer Para USA, which provided the weapons used by Neeson in the Taken film series, expressed regret at working with him, saying: "We will no longer provide firearms for use in films starring Liam Neeson and ask that our friends and partners in Hollywood refrain from associating our brand and products with his projects".[57]

In 2014 he protested the anti-carriage horse campaign of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said he would outlaw horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once he took office. Neeson wrote an opinion page published in the New York Times citing the carriage trade as a safe one for employees, horses and tourists and noted it was a livelihood for many immigrants.[58]

Neeson said that the introduction of household water charges in Ireland in 2014 was one of the reasons why he wouldn’t be moving back to Ireland in the near future.[59]

Neeson met his future wife, actress Natasha Richardson, while performing in a revival of the play Anna Christie on Broadway in 1993.[60] They married on 3 July 1994. In August 2004, Neeson and his wife purchased an estate in Millbrook, New York.[61][62] On 18 March 2009, Richardson died when she suffered a severe head injury in a skiing accident at the Mont Tremblant Resort, north of Montreal. Speaking to CBS Television's Anderson Cooper in the interview which was broadcast on 60 MINUTES, Neeson spoke openly about his grief and about donating his late wife Natasha Richardson's organs following her death.[63] She and Neeson had two sons together, Micheál (born 1995) and Daniel (born 1996). His nephew Ronan Sexton (son of his sister Bernadette) received a serious head injury after falling from a telephone box in Brighton in June 2014.[64]

A heavy smoker earlier in his career, Neeson quit smoking in 2003, while working on Love Actually. When he took the role of Hannibal for the 2010 film adaptation of The A-Team, Neeson had reservations about smoking cigars (which is a signature trait of the character) in the film due to being an ex-smoker, but agreed to keep that personality trait of Hannibal intact for the film.[65] In August 2009, Neeson stated on ABC's Good Morning America that he had been naturalised as a United States citizen.[66] Neeson is a fan of Liverpool FC.[67] and also Crystal Palace F.C.. According to former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan's autobiography, Neeson asked for tickets, explaining that a friend introduced him to the club when he moved from Ireland to London early in his career. In March 2011, he was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.[68]

In June 2012, reports that Neeson was converting to Islam were denied by his publicist. However, he has expressed an affection for the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, that he grew used to while filming Taken 2 in Istanbul: "By the third week, it was like I couldn't live without it. It really became hypnotic and very moving for me in a very special way. Very beautiful."[69] He has also expressed admiration for the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.[70]

Honours and awards

In the year 2000, Neeson was offered the "Freedom of the Town of Ballymena" by the Ballymena Borough Council, but because of objections made by members of the Democratic Unionist Party regarding his comments that he had felt like a "second-class citizen" growing up as a Catholic in the town, he declined the award, citing tensions.[71] Following the controversy, Neeson wrote a letter to the council, stating; "I will always remain very proud of my upbringing in, and association with, the town and my country of birth, which I will continue to promote at every opportunity. Indeed I regard the enduring support over the years from all sections of the community in Ballymena as being more than sufficient recognition for any success which I may have achieved as an actor."[72] Subsequently, on 28 January 2013, Neeson received the Freedom of the Borough from Ballymena Borough Council at a ceremony in the town.[72] He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in her 1999 New Year Honours.[73]The American Ireland Fund honoured Neeson with their Performing Arts Award for the great distinction he has brought to Ireland at their 2008 Dinner Gala in New York.[74] In 2009, at a ceremony in New York, Neeson was awarded an honorary doctorate by Queen's University, Belfast.[75]